Rediscovering a Woman Collector at the British Library: New Sources and Perspectives on Sarah Sophia Banks (AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD Studentship) University College London in United Kingdom

The University College London (UCL) and the British Library invite applications for a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme, commencing 1 October 2026. This PhD project, titled 'Rediscovering a Woman Collector at the British Library: New Sources and Perspectives on Sarah Sophia Banks,' offers a unique opportunity to explore the collecting, knowledge production, and documentary practices of Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818), a prominent antiquarian collector. The research will critically examine Banks’s holdings at the British Library and other institutions, interrogating her collections and the taxonomies she devised as maps of the social, intellectual, and imperial networks she inhabited.

The project is jointly supervised by Dr Lucy Brownson and Prof Elizabeth Shepherd at UCL Department of Information Studies, alongside Felicity Myrone, Maddy Smith, and Dr Alice Marples at the British Library. The successful candidate will spend time at both UCL and the British Library, joining a vibrant cohort of AHRC CDP funded PhD students across the UK. UCL and the British Library strongly encourage applications from individuals of diverse backgrounds and career stages, especially those underrepresented in doctoral research.

Sarah Sophia Banks’s extensive collections, divided after her death, are held across the British Library, Royal Mint, and the British Museum. This studentship focuses on the significant, yet underexplored, holdings at the British Library, aiming to reveal Banks’s interdisciplinary knowledge taxonomy in detail for the first time. The project will utilize Banks’s catalogues and provenance notes to rediscover the arrangement, purpose, and source of her prints, drawings, ephemera, books, and manuscripts. The student will investigate Banks’s networks of knowledge, collecting methods, contacts, and her systems for categorizing materials, addressing broader questions about women collectors, knowledge practices, collecting history, disciplinary norms, and museological frameworks in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The research calls for an interdisciplinary approach, combining critical archival studies, museum studies, and feminist historiography. The candidate will be embedded as an archivist-as-researcher, cataloguing and researching Banks’s holdings at the Library. This hands-on research will enable the student to identify focal areas within Banks’s collections, reading them as windows onto global histories of British colonial expansion. Creative mapping of Banks’s dispersed holdings and their multiple provenances will be encouraged, with case studies contextualizing Banks’s gendered collecting and curatorial practices.

Funding for this studentship is comprehensive: full tuition fees at the UKRI home rate are covered, with UCL waiving the difference for international students. The award includes a full maintenance stipend (£21,383 for 2026/27), a London weighting allowance (£2,000/year), a CDP maintenance payment (£600/year), and a research allowance from the British Library (up to £1,000/year). International candidates must reside in the UK for the duration of the PhD.

Applicants should have a strong academic background in history, art history, museum studies, archival studies, or related fields. A first or upper second class undergraduate degree (or equivalent) is typically required, and a relevant master's degree is preferred. UCL and the British Library encourage applications from diverse backgrounds and those underrepresented in doctoral cohorts. The application deadline is April 14, 2026.

For further information and to apply, visit the FindAPhD project page or the UCL application portal. Prepare your CV, academic transcripts, and a personal statement addressing your suitability and interest in the project. Contact the supervisors for informal enquiries if needed. Ensure your application is submitted by the deadline.